Your Opinion

October 01, 2002

Make users pay

I would like to answer the call that has been made for solutions to our transportation problems. There is only one way to fix our transportation mess, and the proposed sales tax increase is not it. You can widen Interstate 64 from the York to the James and all you will get is a bigger parking lot. The sale tax increase will be used to fund that widening.

The only solution that will work is to decrease the subsidy that the state pays to automobiles. Drivers do not pay the full cost of the roads they use and hence drive even more. The only solution is a constitutional amendment that requires the cost of the roads to be paid by those who use the roads. Road-building using funds from general revenues will only increase the subsidy of automobiles and will only increase the amount of traffic.

Vote no for increased traffic. Vote no for increased sprawl and pollution. Vote no for the sales tax increase.

Robert Stermer

Yorktown

Badly needed

It's interesting that Samuel Scott ("Vote no," Sept. 16) has the faith to believe that the government can be trusted to eliminate dozens of interchanges, ticket thousands of drivers for not staying right, remove all HOV lanes, and add millions of dollars of free public transportation. But that same government cannot be trusted to use a small tax increase to improve existing transportation.

His suggestions would probably cost so much we would have to raise taxes anyway. How does he suggest we pay for the police and courts to handle all the people he wants to ticket? How does he suggest we handle all the surface street traffic that would be created by eliminating a third of our highway interchanges?

Highway improvements are badly needed, and lack of money is the reason they aren't getting done. I for one am not willing to give up quality of life to save a penny in sales tax.